Concept restaurants have always been a bit of a flunk. In fact, concept anything is invariably tosh. Take green tomato ketchup, or marmite chocolate, or foam parties. It’s messing with the tried and tested. Why go to a party that chugs large quantities of chemical slug-spunk at your face as you defend your honour from rugby-tackling fanny-pests who get you on the floor and try to stick their fluorescent whistles in your mouth? And so it was with Dans le Noir. Why go sit in a pitch-black room next to chatty strangers and gobby groups of women, enacting a dirty-protest with your food, when you could go to Hix and laugh at the crap Tracy Emin smudges on the walls instead? Because it was about the same price as Hix. No jokes. £45 each. But for only two courses. Without the wine. And placky food.
You're led by the shoulder of a blind man into a silkily-black hole. The name of the game is to pick a colour, any colour, from surprise white, meat red, fish blue or vegetarian green. But you’re surprised whatever you choose, because it’s dark, and because the chef has no palate. I chose the surprise and then bullied friend into getting meat. Thus it was that we started with a slab of fridgily cold meat with foliage and a smear or two. The crockery is square and huge. This is so that when you’re trafficking your food across the plate it doesn’t plop into your lap. Our morgue-fresh hunk of flesh was particularly resilient to both cutting and fork-stabbing, so mostly we just chased it about to a cacophony of clashing cutlery. Friend said she could taste a bit of chocolate somewhere. I had some kind of fruit and a leaf or two ended up on my fingers. So far so sordid.
You are told at the end of the meal what you actually ate. At this stage I was thinking school-dinner beef with rocket. But apparently we shared a venison carpaccio with mustard greens and a chocolate and raspberry flourish. Carpaccio my thumb, which is exactly how thick it was, and it tasted very very cooked. Friend was cross by now and shrieked ‘I hope no-one is sitting next to us’ as a couple sat down next to us. You see, the dark prangs the senses and everything feels rather tripped-up and chronic when you can’t see, so quiet is loud and tasty is disgusting. That was her excuse anyway.
Then came the main. My first bite was saffron infused mutton with a fish stick. There was something tapenade-filled at one corner and I was very excited to find a pocket of what could only have been buttery Swiss chard. Normality became a treat in this bat-shit cave. Sure sure, they told me it was shark and ostrich and wagyu beef, but it was really very dark and all on the same plate, so I’m not convinced. Besides, I don’t want saffron and olives and butter and shark and tough-old-bird and very expensive beef, and a splurge of different bodily sauces and foams, all in my mouth at once. Though the overall flavour may have been tainted with transference, as I did end up patting down my plate and then sucking on my fingers just in case I had missed something delicious. Tube-yum.
The pudding was nice, because it tasted of chocolate raspberries and the textures were good, layers of crunch and jelly too. Something simple and thought out. And it could be fun too, the eating in the dark nonsense, with the right foodstuffs and friends. Just blindfold your guests and serve them tequila jellies and blue mac ‘n cheese. None of this jasmine and truffle infused urchin guts, or terrapin ballotine with civet-musk potatoes twattery. Don't go. Just don't.
